Thursday, 26 June 2014

Coulson: The political class eats itself

There is something hugely opportunistic about the way the State has committed a mass of tax-funded resources to prosecute some journos who hacked into mobile phone messages. It's not that phone hacking is in itself wrong or immoral - oh no - for GCHQ and the NSA do it all the time, for the public good, you understand. It's only when it's done other than by the State that it's wrong. For you and I, it probably matters little whether our phones are hacked by the Murdoch press or the security services, for this is the 21st century and if you use digital comms technology of any sort you have to expect that it's not going to be private.

So why then does the State, as the Mail claims, spend £40m and take 195 plods away from tracking jihadists, jailing Turkish heroin gangs or finding teen gang knife thugs to build a case against the very press on which the political class relies so heavily? Of course the 'Hacked Off' sleb pressure group has also made full use of its media savvyness. Instead of Hugh Grant, whose jaded and dissipated looks have matched with age the sweat-smell of a ten-dollar black crack whore that he now wears for life, they wheel out a teen cutie with big teeth in true Hollywood wannabe style. How repulsive and tacky was that bit of exploitation and manipulation - in fact it disgusts me more than the possibility that journos hacked Millie Dowler's phone in the first place. Equally loathsome is the political pretence that none of them have ever fawned and crawled at the feet of Rupert Murdoch, for this is really all about an assault on Murdoch's news organisations. The State would prefer to have, say, three or four State-funded media organisations undertaking a pretence of competition rather than a truly independent voice with its own satellites. That's why it's happy to spend so much of our money and take so many plods away from stuff that actually matters. You may not like Murdoch, and he may not be the world's greatest human being, but be glad he's there.

7 comments:

Anonymous
said...

Top of the agenda? NOT a bit of it.

1500, lets say 2000 toing and froing from ISIS in greater Caliphateshire, I await in fear and dread for our 'Bombay-Mumbai railway station' event, a two car bomb, then a AK47 spectacular coming to London? God forbid.

The world financially is up shit creek, soon enough: the damn will burst. In the halls of the Bam Bam's Whitehouse, more noises on Ukraine - some serious [John Kerry inspired] mistakes are about to plunge the world into another and completely unnecessary cold war - because the left wing bleeding hearts division of the west has gotten it totally wrong on PUTIN and RUSSIA. FFS.

Theresa of the HOME OFFICE diversity commune, is rolling out the surveillance state all over again and this time she might succeed. All the time, but diversity Theresa ignores the foreign student visa scams, Salafist radicals on the campuses of every British University and home Asian grooming of British girls - but there you go - Tory [Labour/Liberal] priorities.

Of far greater import for the Westminster gibbons............

The whole thing, Levenson was a fucking circus, on stage twittersphere, demonstrating to the twitterati that, cocaine and 2 girls for Steve ain't so bad after all. Tom Watson and the Labour party and Guardian had some fine old times and the lawyers laughed and laughed and still nothing was ever done.

On and concerning the sad and appalling furore about the tragic demise of Millie Dowler - I always think, just leave them [the family to grieve] alone.

Then:

The girl spieling long about the very unfortunate but ultimately a non event pertaining to the listening in [not true].I thought, who is promising this young lady the meejah contract?

This wasn't really phone hacking, which implies listening to live conversations, but answering machine hacking. Not password protecting your answering machine is foolish, like leaving your car unlocked in the supermarket carpark. It may be illegal to steal from you car, but not locking it is putting temptation in someone's way. The same applies to an answering machines.

Yes, quite! I work in the IT / networks industry and I see this stupidity all the time; passwords that say "password" or 0000 or no password at all. The public needs to be vigilant because, as is suggested, it ain't just Murdoch's journos that are listening in!

Allthere has been a telling silence about one absolutely massive issue and loose threads that have NOT been tugged on.

The involvement of the phone companies.

Anybody who tells you that the scope and reach of the snooping was possible without collusion at high level from mobile operators is either being willfully ignorant or dishonest.

The amounts of money that changed hands on a regular basis from all news sources is non trivial and the Murdoch baiters managed to contain any exploration of other recipients and the methods of delivery, and target / contents of much "telecom gold".

This stinks on oh, so many levels but in essence it only served to shoo away a few dung flies hanging around the toxic sump.

Political ? phew-ee... and then some. The names of the parade of goons whooping and directing the stampede is a roll call of nasty gits to look out for in future.